Sunday, June 20, 2010

Butchers are like surgeons . Very Articulate with their knife .Very clever sales men. Kashmiris always treat them specially. While buying mutton in a butcher’s shop , they wait for casual customers to leave . They engage the butcher in gossip. They brief and update him on current affairs. This all is primarily meant to have some good selective mutton .

Kashmiris need mutton for a variety of dishes .Obviously they need it from different parts of the slaughtered sheep or goat . For Rogan Josh , Yakhani , Keema and Tabak Maaz the pieces have to be from different parts of the slaughtered animal. The butcher has to be careful in cutting the pieces some of which have to be pure mutton some with a little fat content and some have to be mutton with bones. It is really a tough job both ways ; buying and selling . The butcher uses his communication skills to sell all his stock equitably while every purchaser insists to buying selectively. Butchers for sure know what they have to sell while the buyer generally feels he did not get what he wanted . The butcher cleverly passes on his stuff to the buyer saying :-

“Tse Chhay naa Me Peuth Puchh . Tse Vuchh Baa Kyaa Dimmmay ”

(Why not trust me ? Let you see what shall I give)

“Ye Piece Chhuyee Amee Munz”

(This piece is from this hanging flesh )

“Baa zaana na Budaah maadha kanun ”

I do not sell old sheep ( Female )

“Ruth Ye Guvv Chhirr Kuth . Yaad Karakh zi maaz Kyaa Deut Ganiyunn”

(Take this . It is young Lamb. You shall remember this Ganai ( Butcher )

The buyer is never satisfied with what he purchases from a butcher’s shop always thinking that perhaps he stands cheated. When the customer is about to leave , The butcher passes on a clever advice :

“Auth Dizi Na Paak ya Pressure . Ye Gatsee galith ”

( Do Not boil too much or cook in a Pressure cooker. This stuff is just going to melt away. )
I end this brief post with some lines from the poem TRANA E URDU of Ali sardar jafri

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, or thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.